What is a natural holistic approach to vitiligo? It means looking at every system involved with vitiligo, the immune system, the individual’s needs and manage a style of living that promotes health, strength, and dignity for the individual and the world. A holistic approach is in many ways the most challenging, because everything matters. Your choices as an individual are at the center of a holistic approach. It requires that the person take responsibility for their life, to take responsibility for their health, to take responsibility for their dreams and to assume the responsibilities of pursuing their dreams.

For many of us, including myself, vitiligo is a crisis. It’s a crisis of identity because we so strongly identify with our visual appearance. We live in a western world that celebrates vanity with an intense media-saturated culture. So much of how we feel is rooted in what we imagine other people see in us, feel about us, think about us. Vitiligo poses a threat to all of these things and it’s seemingly out of our control. Autoimmune is a rampant disease that is only growing in the western world and increasingly in the eastern world as well.

Key points on autoimmune disease:

Autoimmune has no cure

Autoimmune is progressive

Autoimmune can be debilitating, crippling in a hundred different ways, literally

Autoimmune seems to randomly select people

So what can we do, holistically, do to manage this crisis of health that vitiligo represents? we have three choices: do something, don’t do something and indifference. And within each of these choices we can take responsibility or give that responsibility to someone else.

My natural and holistic approach to vitiligo:

As for me, I have chosen to do everything I can to take responsibility for my health, for my own dreams and my life. This desire to grab the reigns of my own health and life through the choices I make daily is my holistic approach to treating vitiligo naturally.

What do I want for my life? This is the first question that confronts me as I decide to take control of my health. Why do I want to be healthy? Where do I want to go? What do I want to do?

Here is an example of how a dream I have: I love landscape and nightscape photography. I want to be ready to go outside, explore, create and produce beautiful images because it makes me happy, it balances my life and I create things that make me and others smile. I like do landscape photography the best I can. I push myself creatively and so I want a body and a mind that is best prepared to support my dream of being a photographer. If I want to do a 20 mile mile hike with 40 pounds of camera gear I need to be strong, healthy and mentally sharp. If I want to be up early to greet the dawn to make a sunrise photo, I need to be prepared in several ways.

If I want to be the most creative and productive person I can be, I have to choose health, choose mental clarity, emotional stability and drive forward towards my goals. To be the greatest photographer, I need to be my greatest self. My dream pulls me forward, my dream informs my choices. If I want to be doing photography for the rest of my life, well into my late years, I need to be focused on long-term health, long-term performance, long-term happiness.

Autoimmune disease is a misfiring of the immune system. The immune system is the primary way my body will protect itself as I go through life. It’s core to my dreams actually coming real. My bodies defenses need to be firing correctly. I can’t ignore this problem if I want my best life.

I can’t ignore problems if I want my best life.

Everything matters. Health, mental health, emotional health, relationships, a dream that’s bigger than the crisis of the moment, and support systems for all of this. That’s a holistic approach. A systematic choosing of a life that is rich in meaning for me, that’s a holistic approach.

What a holistic approach is not:

supplements – vitamins and minerals

yoga

cleansing

juicing

meditation

diets

chiropractors

acupuncture

one size fits all

focused on a problem

other peoples ideas

What is a natural holistic treatment for vitiligo for you? Maybe it means meditation or a visit to a medical specialist, or a diet that supports you body fully, or corrections, or manages a problem at some point. A holistic approach begins and ends with you. It’s all about the work, the dream, the sacrifices, the choices, the relationships, the inputs, the outputs that you are willing to explore. These is no cure for ill health. There is no pill. There are choices. What it takes for you to accomplish your dream for you life and body is yours, it’s individually determined. Each person’s biology is different. Each body has unique needs. Why? Because stress is different for each person. Injuries are personal. Our environments are unique. What you need to treat your vitiligo is different than what I need to treat vitiligo.

A holistic approach is an individual approach where the individual, you, accepts responsibility for health, healing and their own dreams. You entirely avoid injuries, bacteria, viruses, emotional challenges, professional setbacks, family discord because life is coming at us fast and it’s chaotic at times. How do you manage these?

An autoimmune disease is a stress response from the immune system, a response to a triggering event or triggering situation. Life stress, health stress, skin stress can all be triggering events. Each person has their own story here. Each person has their own path to sickness and each will have a unique path to health. Vitiligo is a trigger and now we get to choose how to respond. Just as our immune systems are misfiring and causing more damage by responding incorrectly, so people often respond incorrectly.

For myself, I gave doctors the responsibility for my health. I ignored the problem. I tried half measures. I avoided making choices that brought my dreams closer, and in doing do invited depression and anxiety into my life. I was fearful of my own dreams. I was scared by what people might think.

What do you want? What do you want to use your body to accomplish? Is your body functioning how you need to succeed on your own personal goals? A holistic approach is a heroic one. You become the hero in your own life willing to accept the challenges of pursuing your dreams. It’s not a common approach. It’s the best way to treat vitiligo. If you want to accept responsibility for managing vitiligo, and autoimmune in your body, so that your life can be all that you want, a natural and holistic approach is the path.

If you want to know more specifically about how I approach vitiligo and how I can support you further, check out my workshop that I linked here. I’ve partnered with my friend Ryan Hendrikson to support people that want to take responsibility for their health and vitiligo. It’s a powerful process we take people through to deal with the mental, emotional and bodily challenges that are unique to vitiligo.